


how to speak from the heart

by bayloriffic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 02:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2450957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bayloriffic/pseuds/bayloriffic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity helps Oliver come up with a strategy for winning back Queen Consolidated.</p><p>Set during “The Calm” (3.01), after the fern scene but before Oliver asks Felicity to dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to speak from the heart

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the “We still on for tomorrow night?” // “Absolutely. I am going to turn you into corporate master of the universe” exchange between Oliver and Felicity in “The Calm.”

Oliver’s on his way Felicity’s apartment when he gets a text from her telling him that she’s going to be late. He gave everyone the night off from Arrow duty, and he and Felicity are supposed to spend the evening brainstorming ideas for his upcoming presentation at Queen Consolidated.

He picked up some dinner on his way over -- nothing fancy, just some take-out from the Chinese place on the corner -- so he tucks the bag under his arm and uses the spare key she gave him to let himself into her place. 

Once he’s inside he shrugs off his jacket and brings the bag of food into the kitchen, unloading the cardboard take-out containers and chopsticks onto the counter. Felicity doesn’t actually have a dining room, so Oliver ends up just carting everything out to the living room to set it up on the coffee table. 

He’s just finished putting out plates and napkins when the front door opens, and Felicity walks in, still dressed in her Tech Village uniform. 

“Ugh, sorry I’m late,” she says. “My shift ran over. I swear to god, if I have to set up one more person’s printer…” She shakes her head, leaning heavily against the door to close it and dropping her bag on the floor. 

“Hey,” Oliver says. He’s got a container of rice in his hand and he holds it up. “I brought dinner.”

“Oliver Queen, you are amazing,” Felicity tells him, kicking off her sensible black sneakers and padding over to where he's standing in the living room. 

“It’s just take-out.” Oliver shrugs, putting the carton of rice on the coffee table with the rest of the food.

“Amazing,” Felicity repeats, patting him on the chest, right above his heart. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he says sincerely. She’s still got her hand on his chest, her fingers warm and steady above his heart. He wonders if she can feel how fast it’s racing.

She’s got a blue pen tucked into her hair behind her ear and her makeup has started to wear off, a light smattering of freckles dotted across the bridge of her nose, and, just like that, it’s like his whole day has gotten brighter. Neither one of them says anything and the silence stretches between them.

“Um, okay, so,” Felicity finally says, pulling her hand off of his chest and taking a couple of steps away from him. “I’m going to go change into something more comfortable," she says, and then shakes her head and closes her eyes. "I mean not _more comfortable_ more comfortable," she clarifies. "I'm not going to put on something sexy or anything, just." She clears her throat and smoothes a hand across the top of her head. "I'll be right back; there’s a bottle of red on the counter if you want to pour us a couple of glasses?”

Oliver nods, smiling as Felicity disappears down the hall and into her bedroom, the door clicking shut behind her. Oliver grabs two glasses and the bottle of Bordeaux from the kitchen, bringing them out into the living room with the rest of their dinner. 

By the time Felicity emerges from her room, dressed in a thin blue tank top and a loose pair of pajama pants, Oliver’s got the wine poured and all of the food arranged on the coffee table. 

Felicity drops down next to him on the sofa, forgoing the plate and just grabbing the carton of orange chicken. “Have I mentioned how amazing you are lately?” she asks, spearing a piece of chicken with her chopsticks and popping it into her mouth. 

“So how was your day?” Oliver asks, settling in next to her with his carton of brown rice and steamed vegetables. He sits probably a little closer to her than he should, close enough that her arm brushes up against his every time she takes a bite of food, but he manages to convince himself it’s just because Felicity’s couch is unusually small. 

“Ugh, terrible,” Felicity sighs, leaning over to steal a snow pea from him. He tilts the carton towards her, giving her better access. “I mean, how hard is it to set up a freaking printer?”

Oliver hums sympathetically, and then Felicity’s off, rambling about her day and her job and the apparently unending idiocy of the Tech Village customer base. For his part, Oliver doesn’t say much, just listens to her talk, even if, to be completely honest, Oliver’s not quite sure what exactly she’s talking about. The truth of it is, he misses her, misses her more than he ever thought possible, which is especially absurd considering that they still spend almost every night together, but he doesn’t see her at all during the day any more, her shifts at work consuming most of her daylight hours. It's gotten to the point where listening to her babble about computers and her crappy job is the highlight of his day. 

They’re on their second glass of wine, and Felicity’s just finishing telling him a story about email or servers or connectivity when she shakes her head and says, “I mean, can you believe that?” 

Oliver doesn’t answer right away, and she raises her eyebrows at him expectantly.

“Um,” he says, not really sure what she asked him. "No?" 

Felicity smiles. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?"

“Not really,” Oliver admits, and she laughs, soft and sweet. 

“Well, thank you for listening anyway,” she tells him, bumping her shoulder against his. “And for bringing me dinner. You’re way too good to me.” 

Oliver shakes his head. If anything, he’s nowhere good enough to her; she deserves way more than cheap wine and crappy takeout. “You’re the one doing me a favor,” he says. “I still have no idea what I’m going to say to the Board.” 

“Oh, right,” Felicity says, sitting up a little bit straighter and shaking her head like she’s trying to clear it. “The Board. We should probably get started on that.” And then she’s handing him her wine glass and heading over to the door to wear she dropped her bag earlier, rifling through it until she comes up with a stack of papers. 

She comes back to the couch and trades Oliver the papers for the wine, taking a long sip while Oliver flips through the documents. They’re mostly just lists of numbers, with a couple of graphs thrown in for variety. There’s a lot of highlighting and some annotations, the margins filled with notes written in Felicity’s looping cursive, but even with all that, he has no idea what he’s looking at right now.

His confusion must show on his face because Felicity settles back down beside him and says, “These are the financials and quarterly reports for Queen Consolidated, starting from when you were named as CEO until you stepped down in April. Now, obviously, there’s a lot of information here.” She mercifully takes the papers back from him and hands him her tablet instead. “So I’ve gone through them and have streamlined the information to make it a little more palatable.” 

The information on the tablet doesn't seem quite so intimidating, just a couple of simple graphs, all of them done in bold colors. “You did all of this?” Oliver asks. He only asked her to help him come up with a plan for the Board meeting three days ago. “This must have taken forever.”

“Please,” Felicity scoffs, waving her hand dismissively. “Just a simple bit of coding and the computer did all the work for me.” 

Oliver looks over at her and smiles, she smiles back. Her cheeks are a little flush from the wine and her eyes look even brighter than normal, and he just...he is completely and totally in love with her. 

“So,” he says, clearing his throat and looking down at the tablet. “What exactly am I looking at?”

Felicity slides over to look at the screen with him, her side pressed against him and her bare arm warm against his. “These are the numbers for QC’s performance since you took over as CEO.”

Oliver scans the screen, seeing things like -75% and -250% and a lot of plunging red lines. “These don’t look so good.”

“That’s because they’re not,” Felicity says apologetically.

“Right,” he sighs, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He’s not sure why he’s surprised; he was a completely shitty CEO.

“Hey,” she says, and her voice is soft and serious. “You had a lot going on last year. Sure the numbers aren’t great, but on the plus side, you did save Starling City from being destroyed by yet another bloodthirsty madman.”

“Too bad I can’t bring that to the Board. ‘Listen guys, I know I suck as a businessman, but you’d all be dead if it weren’t for me, so please give me back the company I almost ran into the ground.’ That could work, right?” Oliver shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair.

“We’ll call that Plan B.” Felicity smiles and, just like that, he feels a little bit better. 

“So what’s Plan A?”

“Well, obviously you don’t have the numbers...or the qualifications, actually. But you do have history, and you have passion, and you have heart.”

“Okay,” Oliver says dubiously, handing Felicity back her tablet without looking any more closely at the numbers. He gets the gist: he’s a terrible businessman; no need to dwell on something he can’t change. “So...what does that mean?”

“It means you’ve got to charm them.”

He sighs again, tipping his head back against the couch and staring up at the ceiling. 

Beside him, Felicity reaches over, taking his hand in both of hers. Her skin is warm and soft, and his breath catches in his throat. “Hey,” she says, holding his hands in both of hers. She runs the pads of her thumbs gently against the underside of his wrist in soft, soothing circles, waiting until he looks at her. “You can do this.”

He nods, trying very hard to believe her. “So where should I start?”

“If it were me?” Felicity says. “I’d play up the whole came-back-from-the-dead angle. Everyone loves a good resurrection story. I mean, hey, look at Jesus. Only dead for three days and he inspired a whole new religion. Not that I’m saying you’re Jesus. Or that Jesus was actually resurrected, since…” She lets go of his wrist to point both index fingers at herself. “Jewish. But, you know what I mean. You came back, Queen Consolidated can come back. Parallels. Metaphors. Whatever.”

“Okay,” Oliver agrees, and somehow he’s smiling again. “I think I can work with that.” 

“Excellent,” she says. “So then you can bring up the bank funding, talk about the future, that sort of thing. Just be sure to keep the patented Oliver Queen charm in full effect, and I think we’ll be good.”

“Yeah, that sounds doable,” he says, even if he thinks she’s grossly overestimating his ability to charm a room full of stuffy businessman. 

“Okay, good.” She gives him a bright smile, dimples creasing her cheeks. “Then let’s hear it.” 

“Hear what?”

“Your spiel,” Felicity says, taking a sip of wine and settling back against the arm of the couch, moving so that her toes are tucked up under his thigh. The casual intimacy of the gesture makes something in his chest feel tight. “Let’s hear it.”

“Didn’t you just do the spiel?”

“No. I gave you some ideas, but you need to have something more concrete, something prepared. But,” she adds, looking at him over the top of her glasses. “It can’t seem _too_ prepared. You want to sound genuine, not rehearsed.” 

“But you want me to rehearse,” Oliver says, not bothering to hide his confusion. 

“I want you to rehearse sounding un-rehearsed,” Felicity tells him, wiggling her toes under his leg in a way that is completely distracting.

Oliver swallows hard and resists the urge to shift in his seat. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Okay, so. Two years ago, I came back from the dead, and now it’s time for Queen Consolidated to come back as well,” he starts, glancing over at Felicity. 

She gives him a reassuring nod, gesturing for him to keep going. So he does, talking about coming back, and how Starling National Bank is excited about providing the funds, and how if the backers will just give him another chance, he’ll ensure QC’s success.

“So,” he says once he’s finished. “How was that?”

“Good,” Felicity says, but he can tell by her tone that there’s a _but_ coming. She chews on her lower lip for a second and then says, “But I think it’s missing something.”

“Not enough charm?” Oliver asks, glancing at her sidelong and tapping the top of her foot with his knuckles. Her toes flex against his leg, and his stomach does a little flip. 

“Oh, you’ve got plenty of charm; you’ve charm in spades, charm just shooting out of every orifice, and oh my god. I can’t believe I just said that. Let’s just pretend I didn’t use the word orifice. Or talk about stuff shooting out of you.” Felicity winces, scrunching up her nose adorably. “And, just...yeah. I have had a _very_ long day.” 

Oliver takes a sip of wine to hide his smile. “Okay, so, I’m missing something that isn’t charm…” he prompts. 

“Yes,” Felicity says, sounding grateful. Her cheeks are flushed pink and her eyes look very blue behind her glasses. “It’s...just...it’s a little impersonal. A little cold. You need to speak from the heart.” 

“Not exactly my strong suit,” he mumbles, scrubbing a hand across his face. 

“Maybe something about your family?” Felicity suggests. 

“Maybe,” he agrees. He spends the next couple of minutes thinking, trying to come up with something from the heart that doesn’t sound either ridiculous or insincere. For her part, Felicity sits quietly beside him, not saying anything, sipping her wine and letting him think it through. 

Finally: “My mother always said that there was nothing more important to her than family,” Oliver says. “And while she and I certainly had our differences, we did agree on that. And, now, that she’s gone, and my father’s gone, and Thea--”

“Thea’s not gone,” Felicity reassures him. 

“I know,” he says, even though he doesn’t know that, not really. “But sometimes...sometimes it just feels like Queen Consolidated is the only part of my family that’s still standing, the only part of my parents that I have left.”

“You should use that,” she tells him, nudging him gently with her foot. Her toenails are painted a bright sky blue. “Talk about Queen Consolidated as your family.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she confirms. “I mean, you care about the company and you care about the people, and that’s what you should focus on.” 

“Okay, so: I can bring Queen Consolidated back from the dead, I’ve got the backing of Starling National Bank, and the company is as important to me as family,” he summarizes. “That about cover it?”

“It does,” Felicity confirms, but then she’s handing him back her tablet. “But you should probably familiarize yourself with the numbers a little more, just in case the Board members have any questions.”

Oliver sighs, taking the tablet back and staring blankly down at the screen. Beside him, Felicity grabs the remote from the arm of the couch and turns on the television, flipping through the channels. Eventually, she settles on something, a show he doesn’t recognize, a bunch of young attractive people talking fast and getting into wacky hijinks. 

“Is this going to bother you?” she asks, nodding at the TV. 

“Not at all,” he assures her, and she smiles, shifting a little so that the soles of her feet are resting on the edge of his lap. Oliver puts one hand on the top of her foot, brushing his thumb over the bare skin on her ankle, and he feels her relax even further, sighing a little and settling back against the couch. 

They stay like that for the next hour, the sitcom Felicity’s watching transitioning into another one with a slightly different group of wacky, attractive friends. She keeps her feet in his lap, and even though Oliver is ostensibly looking at the QC financials and thinking about his presentation, what he’s actually doing is stroking his fingers against the soft skin of Felicity’s ankle and thinking about what Diggle said to him yesterday, thinking about the way being with Felicity makes him feel like everything's okay, thinking about things he never thought he'd get to have. 

When the next show starts, some dimly lit procedural with grim cops, he finally gives up the pretense of studying the numbers, clicking off the tablet and looking over at her. “Felicity,” he starts, but then stops when he sees that she’s got her eyes closed, her empty wine glass cradled loosely against her chest. 

“Felicity?” he tries again, but she doesn’t react, and Oliver silently curses his timing. It figures that when he finally works up the nerve to ask her on a date, she’s not even conscious. 

As gently as he can, Oliver slides her feet out of his lap and reaches over to take the glass from her hands before leaning over to set it on the coffee table. Her hair is starting to come loose from her ponytail, and Oliver reaches over to smooth a strand behind her ear. When his fingers brush against the soft skin of her neck, her eyes blink open, and she looks at him sleepily behind her glasses.

“Hey,” she says, the corner of her mouth turning up in a smile. He’s practically kneeling over her, one hand braced on the back of the couch, the other resting on the arm next to her head.

“Hey,” he says back. He should move away from her, should move back to the other side of the couch or get up altogether. It’s getting late, and he knows she’s got another early shift tomorrow. “I should get going,” he finally says, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears, low and rough.

“You should just spend the night here with me,” she mumbles sleepily.

Oliver arches an eyebrow, waiting for her brain to catch up with her mouth. It takes a second, but then her eyes get wide, and she shakes her head, sitting up a little so that he has to sit back. 

“On the couch, I mean. Stay on the couch. And I’ll stay in my bed. Alone, obviously. Because you’ll be on the couch. Not in my bed.”

Oliver just watches her as she rambles, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth and a light, happy feeling blooming in his chest. “I’d hate for that bed you bought me to go to waste,” he tells her.

She nods, but seems a little disappointed. Oliver tries not to read anything into that. “Are you feeling better about the Board meeting?” she asks.

“Much better,” he assures her. “Thank you for your help.”

“No problem. Remember, just speak from the heart, and you’ll be fine.”

“Right,” he agrees, thinking that if he were any good at speaking from the heart, he wouldn’t have spent the past five months pining over her, wishing he told her how he felt back when she asked him on Lian Yu. He thinks about telling her now, telling her that he loves her, has loved her, that he wants her and needs her, that she’s the most important person in his life. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” he says instead.

She nods and her glasses slip down her nose. “Yep. I’ll stop by the foundry after work.”

He thinks about kissing her then, but settles for pushing her glasses back into place and cupping his hand against her cheek, brushing his thumb across the curve of her cheek. She leans into his touch, her eyes drifting closed again.

He's going to ask her tomorrow, he promises himself. He's going to ask her out to dinner, a real dinner, with reservations and candlelight and food that doesn’t come out of cardboard takeout boxes. He's going to take her advice and speak from the heart.

“Goodnight, Felicity,” he says quietly, and she smiles. 


End file.
